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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Dentist


"That's IT, young lady! If you don't start behaving, I'm NOT taking you to the dentist!"
I said that.
Yep, just this morning.
How many kids do you suppose you could successfully leverage the threat of a cancelled dental appointment with?

None?
Maybe a couple-right after Hell froze over with little pigs circling like seagulls in the sky?

Well She-Who-Worships-Pink immediately dissolved into a flood of tears:
"I'm SORRY!" 
"WAAAAAAH- please, PLEASE- I want to go to the DENTIST!!!"
"I'm so SORRY mummy!!!!"

This is not normal behaviour for a child-I know that. Neither is her obsession with her plaque...
But over the past few months, the Daddy Person and I have come to realise that trying to engender awareness in our child often creates obsessions.

Like the petrol thing.
Somehow I got roped into a discussion on petrol being poisonous (a long story) during which I mentioned that some silly people sniff it for fun and even sniffing it can make you sick enough to die if you do it a lot. So now Pinkster goes nuts in the service station every time I fill up, because she can smell the petrol and therefore, she will probably will die.

Yup.
A few too many frank discussions going on between the booster and the driver's seats I'm afraid. Mummy is merrily galloping through mine-fields and not even aware of it.

But some things you tell them just don't stick at all.  Like for the the past six months I've tried in vain to explain to Pinkster that twirling around the bathroom wafting a buzzing electric toothbrush through the air, while discussing the tooth fairy, does not actually get one's teeth clean.

Or in fact maintain them in any marketable shape that, said fairy, would be enticed to pay good money for.

So we had the plaque discussion. I brought in a magnified mirror and showed her the tiny build-up between two of her bottom teeth. I even used a dental plaque tool and scraped a bit off by way of a demo.

I know got the point across finally because she's brushing her teeth properly, diligently even perhaps a bit excessively.  But she 'watches' her plaque obsessively. When she rinses and spits, she scours the porcelain looking for bits of plaque. The plaque scraper is now a daily request.

So this is how she ended up in the dentist's chair, for the first time, this morning - holding a mirror, fascinated and clearly elated, as she watched all the plaque get polished off.

Half an hour after, at school, she marched around the playground grinning at her friends like the Cheshire cat...

.. reactions were mixed.

As the school bell rang she asked, panicking, how she would brush her 'new shiny' teeth after lunch.

"You have an apple sweetie, that will clean your teeth" and as I left I was thinking; 'Dear God, don't let her start asking for half a dozen apples everyday'.




 Linking up with the Multitasking Mummy


11 comments:

  1. Oh my Dog, that was brilliant!! Why didn't I think of that approach.

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    1. I told the Dental Nurse and she thought it was hilarious;she told me she'd had an 8-y-o boy in the day before who was catatonic as soon as he sat in the chair. I hope this dentist love sticks with Pinkster. :0)

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  2. Oh my goodness, that's hilarious. I would absolutely love it if my son loved to brush his teeth as much as your daughter, it's a battle every time! thanks for linking up. Oh and P.S. I can't believe it, I saw my logo you so kindly added to your blog and it bloody has a spelling mistake! I've uploaded a new button on my website. I feel so silly!

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    1. Thanks Eva, great to hear from you & be part of your linky. Try the magnified mirror trick with your son & show him his plaque if he has some. Pinkster also loves Macleans' big teeth bubble-gum flavoured toothpaste.
      I'll re-do the button tomoz- dont sweat it-blame it on the demands of multi-tasking motherhood :0)

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  3. Ha ha!! You might have to invest in growing a few apple trees there. Your battle iscertainly won on the tooth front. I have hope for my 16mnt old who loves sticking a toothbrush in her mouth and sucking all the toothpaste off. The 2 yr old is a work in progress but we are brushing. Just!!!

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    1. Good luck Elisha, if its any consolation Pinkster was dreadful at 2yrs- I must say though the big plus for me choosing her day care centre was that they made a big deal of getting all the kids to brush their teeth together after lunch! I also told her a horror story about my friends kitten whose teeth seemed to be growing like long fangs.. It was all plaque build up & the vet had to break it all off with pliers. I am pretty ruthless when I'm trying to make a point-its a wonder she didnt have nightmares :0/
      Hang in there

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